Obama’s nominee to the National Labor Relations Board, Harold Craig Becker, came under fire in his senate confirmation hearing yesterday. As controversial nominee are wont to do, he tried to distance himself from his past writings:

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R., Ga.) expressed concern that Becker’s writings “have indicated a belief that the NLRB has the power to make some of the dramatic changes in the card-check bill.” The so-called card-check legislation, supported by Obama and Democrats in Congress, would allow unions to bypass secret-ballot elections and instead organize in workplaces by collecting signed cards from workers.

Becker on Tuesday suggested that he now doesn’t believe the board could take such a step, distancing himself from the writings.

“The law is clear that the decision…(of) an alternative route to certification rests with Congress and not the board,” Becker said, adding that the writings were “intended to be provocative and to ask fundamental questions in order for scholars and others to re-evaluate.”

Now, he’s all about implementing the will of Congress, you see. (“‘If confirmed, my decisions, unlike the views of a scholar, will have practical, concrete and important consequences,’ he told members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee. ‘I will have a duty to implement the intent of Congress.’”) That, of course, marks a stark reversal from his 1993 law review article, in which he claimed just the opposite, namely that election rules should be redrafted to favor unions and that the NLRB could do this all on its own without Congressional authorization.

Then the issue of his association with the SEIU surfaced:

Becker saw tough questioning from Sen. John McCain (R. Ariz.) over whether he would recuse himself from cases before the NLRB involving the Service Employees International Union, where Becker most recently worked. Becker said he would recuse himself from cases involving the Service Employees International Union for two years but stopped short of saying what he would do so in a case mentioned by McCain involving a local chapter of the union.

“If any other matter arises in which any questions can be raised or might be raised about my impartiality, I will take that very seriously,” Becker said.

McCain told Becker “that’s not good enough.”

The real question is whether Harry Reid will try to jam this nomination through before Scott Brown is seated next week and Republicans can mount a successful filibuster. If Reid decides to force the vote with Sen. Paul Kirk still casting votes nearly a month after the Massachusetts election, it will be one more example of the excesses of one-party rule – in which a president beholden to political patrons can put up a nominee with obvious bias and ethical problems, knowing that his dutiful senate allies will rubber stamp his choice. And what of those Red State senators who swear to their constituents that they exercise independent judgment? They keep assuring their constituents that they don’t simply do the bidding of their ultra-liberal leadership. Oh well, another time perhaps. Now, one suspects it is time to ram through a favor for Big Labor.